Bone Bender 1 description and working theory text by Björn Juhl Here's short tour through the circuit. The first stage in a Mark 1 is a buffer and it was made with germanium transistors and the first run of Bone Benders were made like this. However as I consider the buffer having little impact on sound while on the look out for ways to reducing noise I decided to try a J-Fet and the adjusted the inputimpedance to be more similar to what could be expected from a germanium transistor and that is seen in the choice of R5 that effectively sets the inputimpedance of the J-Fet as that has an internal impedance of several Mega Ohm's; for a germanium transistor input impedance is roughly calculated as hie+hfe times the emitter load and thus is a little less predictable and varies with setting of Attack control but I set R5 empirically while listening to how volume control on guitar reacted and top treble and decided 300K was about fine. At buffer output comes Attack control that effectively limits gain of circuit by the divider it forms with the input impedance of gain stage 1. Gain stages 1&2 are made similar and both are set up with traditional stabilization networks for a transistor- note though that since germanium transistors have a leakage current from Collector to base known as Icb and that Icb is a variable between the germanium transistors the stabilization network must take this into account ( for silicon transistors of modern kind Ibc is generally so small it can be ignored for all practical purposes- not so with germanium transistors as those can even be turned on into working state by virtue of Ibc) while in the circuit there's a trimmer to each base so linear at very small signals response can be set- how to do this is described below in A Musician's Approach to Biasing Fuzz Pedals. There are two caps one for each gain stage between collector and base and those are amplified by the Miller effect so their true value is gain times pf+ ghost Miller cap, that is formed internally to the transistor- Values of those caps were set empirically to limit upper treble just above 'vital' treble as in just above where a loss was
perceived. Finally there's a Volume control and the circuit since it uses all NPN and N- channel J-Fet is negatively grounded and the B-tree is supplied with a decoupling capacitor and series filter resistor and also polarity protection and there's an LED connected to show status of fuzz as in activated or not activated and because of this the fuzz can be driven from a standard +9V supply and it is fairly stable to Voltage fluctuations so there is no real benefit from running the circuit from a battery while it certainly can be driven by a battery. However sound will differ with differing Voltage and on some supplies Voltage can be manually set from say 4,5V to 9V and of course at lower voltages sound will saturate sooner. Difference between the versions are noted in the schematic and notice since there's ample trimming range any typical germanium NPN transistor can be used in the circuit and be biased but biasing must be performed if linear to small signal conditions shall apply. About NTE103A versus AC127 For the Bone Bender I had first intended NTE103A as I had some in my drawers and so the first units were made with NTE103A. I'd really wanted to make an NPN version and with parts that not only would be good but that can still be had a reasonable prices. NPN germanium transistors have always been rare and have mostly been made for Audio complementary power amps or for computer logic. NTE103 is a replacement part and is a direct replacement of AC127 and thus NTE103A meets all the key data of AC127. I was actually when doing the first Bone Bender that "the chef can use what parts the chef can use"...and it also struck me with a bit of humor that the NTE 103A was initially made for repair of older electronic equipment. It so happened that I swiftly ran out of NTE103A's and ordering more would have minimum quantity of 50 units and a delivery of 6 weeks...which could be fine although I felt I needed some swifter and so I saw another supplier that had some AC127's in stock so I bought those... not sure when more will be available, but they are possible to order from a distributor in France. However I ran out of the AC127's too and got some more NTE103A's... Sonically I'd say there are smaller difference between the AC127 and NTE103A than there are within the respective groups :) meaning that yes they are all germanium NPN transistors and they are all over the place in terms of leakage and gain and for these reasons the Bone Benders have various stabilization networks and also trimming points to get best possible performance. I really wanted to make the Bone Benders as they could have been made in the mid- 60's but in a way that would be possible today, meaning that yes could easily use old style transistors to get the sounds but today it would be good if the fuzz can have DC-input standard polarity, be somewhat controlled in terms of drift with temperature and further have a pilot LED and a typical stomp box size for ease of use in pedalboards and further have impedance levels that would work well with industrial standards of today. I'd summarize and say I was equally pleased with the AC127 version as I was with NTE103A version.
A musician's approach to biasing fuzz pedals Here's how I'd set up the bias for any of the above fuzz pedals (except Square wave) Set a guitar amplifier up for about 1/4W to 1 W and hook up the fuzz pedal and connect an electric guitar ( I'd usually use a Telecaster- something single coil is a little easier to work with ) with volume on full.
Then listen to hum as produced through the amp and adjust trimmer for loudest hum and then turn down volume control on guitar slightly and listen and adjust if necessary to make hum gradually go up and down while turning the volume control on guitar. The hum that is caused by guitar picking up magnetic fields makes for a test signal that can be used to set up performance of the fuzz. Note how sound changes if bias is slightly of and cutting out sound... Extended version This circuit is composed by three stages and first stage is a buffer, meaning it has a voltage gain slightly shy of 1, but a fairly high current gain. In vintage Tone Benders and its forerunner the Gibson FZ1 this stage is made with a germanium transistor but in the Bone Bender this stage is made with a modern J-FET which has the advantage of much lower noise while performing the same function. The function of this stage is to convert the high impedance of an electric guitar to a current large enough to drive the second stage and to isolate guitar pick up from loading of the low impedance of second stage input. Stage 1 that is a buffer therefore has no distortion of its own but is used to create more gain from stage 2. Fuzz control is in Bone Bender one a variable resistor that at max is shorted and thus allows maximum drive of stage 2 as Fuzz control is turned down less current is supplied to stage 2 and is instead absorbed over P1 Fuzz control. The main fuzz circuit consists of two cascaded transistors in common emitter configuration ( Emitter is grounded and the other two terminals serve as in- and output) The two stages are made alike so those will be described as one stage: The principal of a transistor is that it can amplify a small current into a much larger one. In order for the transistor to do this the transistor needs to be set slightly open. For most linear operation usually half supply voltage is set as resting point of Collector. In order for this resting voltage at Collector to result a resting current must flow via the Base-Emitter diode. In a perfect transistor computation of bias networks would be easy and with typical silicon transistors computation must consider maximum and minimum variations of base current and collector current and their relation. However this circuit uses germanium transistors and those have a leakage current that must be considered ( in silicon devices this leakage current is so small that it generally can be ignored). Now there are several variables that influence resting point but luckily all can be combated by the variable bias supply. R7 and 25K trimmer form a voltage divider but because there also is a significant leakage current that flows from Collector to Base R7 is made about ten times larger than would be needed for a silicon transistor and since the forward voltage of the germanium transistors used is about 110mV bias network is designed to give most linear operation around mid rotation of 25K trimmer. How to set up bias using only a screwdriver as tool is described above in a Musician's Approach to Biasing Fuzz pedals. The circuit is equipped with both false polarity protection via D1 and isolation from battery aging as well as humfiltering from adapters via filter R2 C1. C1 will keep impedance low over fuzz circuit even if impedance in battery increases. Note that lower supply voltage makes for more distortion
Depending on the setting of Fuzz control the second stage can either distort just ever so slightly or have a bit of distortion but the third stage input sees the full voltage swing at output of second stage and the main bulk of distortion is created in the third stage. Total gain of circuit is roughly the first stage amplification multiplied by the second stage's amplification minus losses by the third stage loading the second but roughly between 46dB to 60dB or 200 times to 1000 times depending on the variation of the intended transistors used. Basically any NPN germanium transistor can be used in the circuit but for a fairly deep fuzz effect the transistors used should have a hfe higher than 50 and preferably between 60 and 150 times Possible modifications If you want to get a tighter sound replace R4 with 10nF capacitor and R5 270K. This will cut some bass at input making sound tighter. Note that a J-Fet has no grid current and so the input rests at ground potential but if you use a germanium transistor for stage one bias will be created by leakage and there will be a voltage present at bas of transistor and then R4 must be a capacitor and use 10nF If you want to make Fuzz control vary bass response for less bass at max fuzz and more bass at minimum try replacing C3 with 82nF If you want to reduce voltage output you can add R11 as a series resistor in between C7 and terminal 3 Volume control. To retain same sound scale capacitor according to total increase of 50K + R11: so if R11 is made 470K C7 needs to be reduced by a factor 10 to 10nF; if R11 is made 51K then C7 needs to be reduced by a factor 2 to 50nF ( 47nF will do just fine). If you want less treble you can try increasing C6. Connect a 330pF capacitor in parallel with the 100pF for 430 pf total.